The Good Earth: Family Structure in Rural China :: Pearl Buck Good Earth Essays

intimately critiques of The Good Earth are preoccupied with the authentic quality of the novel, and while the Western critiques praise it as a novel based on facts, the Chinese hold a different view. Kang Younghill, a Chinese man, in reference to the image Pearl Buck created of China, stated that it is discouraging to rally that the novel works toward confusion, not clarification (Kang 368). This statement illuminates Kangs feelings that the details, which Buck had presented as factual in the novel, were contrary to the actual life of the Chinese. Yet researches run through shown that Buck was rightly informed and presented her information correctly. One detail that she nonrecreational special attention to was the family structure within the country-style Chinese family, which she presented in the form of the Wang Lung household. The family structure demonstrated by Buck is not restricted to the Wang Lung family, but was a part of every rural Chinese crustal pla te in the early 1900s. Every members experiences within the family structure are pertinacious by the role and expectations placed on them by the society, and Buck was thrifty to include these experiences in Wang Lungs family. According to the World Book Encyclopedia, in rural China, persons live in large family units, and it was ideal that five generations live beneath the same roof. Even so, most peasants live in nuclear families, and the all-encompassing family can only be afforded by the wealthy. (China family life 483) This was mayhap one of the reasons why Buck transported Wang Lung from a peasant to a abundant landlord, so she could establish an all-inclusive family structure that was ideal to all Chinese families. When Wang Lung was just married he lived in a somewhat saucer-eyed nuclear family, except for the presence of his father that would make it like an extended family. Moreover, the Chinese perception of a nuclear family included the father, but wh en members separate than the children are introduced, the family would then be an extended one. Thus, Wang Lungs nuclear family is comprised of himself, O-lan, his wife, and his father. After he had his children, there were three generations under his roof. Wang Lung soon began to prosper, and had an extended family when his uncle and his family moved into Wang Lungs house.